James Jack

Humanities (Visual Art)

Dr James Jack is an artist concerned with rejuvenating fragile connections that exist in the world. He has developed socially engaged artworks for the Setouchi International Art Festival, Busan Biennale Sea Art Festival, Institute of Contemporary Art Singapore, Echigo-Tsumari Triennale and Tokyo Metropolitan Art Museum. His works on paper crafted with handmade pigments have been displayed at Kentler International Drawing Space, Cheryl Pelavin Fine Art, Sumi Gallery, the Asian-American Art Center and the Fukuoka Prefectural Art Museum. Solo exhibitions of his work have been held at the Honolulu Museum of Art, TAMA Gallery (New York), Beppu-Wiarda Gallery (Portland), Portland Art Center, TMT Art Projects (Fukuoka) and Satoshi Koyama Gallery (Tokyo). Dr Jack completed a doctoral degree at Tokyo University of the Arts and then worked to establish the Global Art Practice MFA programme there. In Singapore, his works have been exhibited at the Centre for Contemporary Art, the ADM Gallery at NTU as well as the Institute for Contemporary Art. Before joining the faculty at Yale-NUS College, he was a Postdoctoral Artist Fellow at the Social Art Lab at Kyushu University.

Dr Jack’s artistic research concentrates on creative perspectives emerging from islands in the Pacific. Artworks embody these expanded views and help us understand complicated natural and human caused events occurring across the globe today. Artworks tell us about the paradoxical condition of our present society in ways that are both analytical and suggestive. The purpose of Dr Jack’s research is to consider the complex relationships between art and society today. This will be achieved not by investigating artworks as the subject of research as in conventional research, but through artwork practice that synthesises the research. The vibrant colours of society form the base that nourishes and informs this art practice.

Through permanent artworks, installation video and text-based works, Dr Jack is re-envisioning the connectedness of islands. Since many of the islands have been overlooked in the colonial gaze, bypassed in militarist desires or left behind in rapid globalisation, this research challenges previous histories of the Pacific. Towards this aim, alternative views of land will be imagined within the complex social circumstances of the Pacific today. This includes socio-geographic mapping of the ocean as seen through the eyes of individual people, building upon the intimate connection between one person and another.

BooksThe Sea We See. Arts Council Tokyo, March 2017.

Play with Nature, Played by Nature. Satoshi Koyama Gallery, June 2013.

Philosophies of Dirt: James Jack. Satoshi Koyama Gallery, October 2012.

Living in Story: Toshiaki Tomita. (Co-author) Intersections: University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa, 2011.

Articles
“Spirits of Tsureshima: Creative Storytelling with Islanders”, Shima: The International Journal of Research into Island Cultures, Vol. 12, No. 1, April 2018: pp. 99-117.

“Is Sharing Possible? An Artist’s Reflection on Collectivity” (分かち合いは可能か？ ～共同性に関するアーティストの省察) Art and Time, Art and Place: Social Art Lab 2015-2017, Japanese Ministry for Cultural Affairs, March 2018: pp. 118-136.

“Art From What is Already There on Islands in the Seto Inland Sea”, Japanese Popular Culture Reader, Routledge Press, 2017, pp. 457-468.